Alan Horkan wrote: > > Current policy is intentional and traditional ... > > see: > http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html >...
It's a usability problem with e-mail clients. Not only do most of them not have a "Reply to List" button, but they expect you to decide whether your reply would be better sent to the author or to everyone *before you've even started writing it*. This makes the decision unnecessarily hurried and error-prone (and also contributes to inane personal chatter on mailing lists). I look forward to one day using a mailer that gets this right. Even while we wait for such software, though, the embarrassment caused by replies sent to the list that were supposed to go just to the previous author probably would outweigh the annoyance caused by replies sent to an individual that were supposed to go to the list. I'm subscribed to a mailing list that works the way Caleb suggested, and it's a frequent cause of cringing when replies that were supposed to be private end up being read by the entire organization. But it's an asymmetric problem, rare severe harm versus more common small annoyance, which is why the issue is contentious. Cheers -- Matthew Paul Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/ _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
